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Articles Tagged with: Apple

Sunrise With Snapseed

One of my favorite iPhone/iPad photo editing apps is now available on the Mac App Store, and it’s called Snapseed. It’s more than just an effects application, but it’s strength is that it’s a quick and fun way to add some textures and styles to your images. The people at Nik software are really setting the bar pretty high with their image editing effects, and this mobile app crossover is no exception.

I was up at an ungodly hour this morning (for a Sunday) and managed to catch the sunrise from my back porch. I decided to make lemonade out of the lemony situation and play around with the photo in Snapseed to see what I could make with it. The image above was made using their “Grunge” effects as a starting point. The following is the same photo was using Snapseed’s “Vintage” effects as the starting point:

It also has a mean black & white converter. This version of the image used the “Film” preset as a starting point as well as a green filter effect:

And for the purists out there, it also does some very subtle basic adjustments, such as saturation, cropping & straightening, sharpening, etc. The interface is very simplified compared to more professional editing software such as Adobe Lightroom, which to some might be a selling point. Here’s the same photo straight out of Lightroom as a reference point:

For $20, this application is a steal.

Photo-Tech Update

I was recently “forced” into an upgrade of my iPhone to the new 4S model (by forced, I mean I was eligible for upgrade pricing and the home button on my 4 wasn’t working, so I bought a new one). I have to say that I’m floored by the quality of the new iPhone camera. Combined with the amazing photo editing software available on iOS such as Snapseed, you can make truly stunning photos. I’m not saying anything new here, but the newer cell phone cameras have enough resolution where editing photos is far less destructive (at least it’s less noticeable). Photos such as the one above are now at a resolution suitable for printing at a decent size! The dynamic range seems more realistic, and the image stabilization helps combat Mr. Blurrycam (this is especially effective for taking video). I’m very excited about it.

TechCrunch brought this service to my attention. CameraTrace claims to be able to find your lost camera based on an embedded serial number in your EXIF data. The concept is very interesting, but it seems to me the type of person who is stealing photo equipment will not be uploading pictures to Flickr. It’s more likely that the camera will be sold on Craigslist or in a WalMart parking lot to an unassuming poor photographer who will be the one who gets caught with the stolen goods (I know, because I recovered my stolen camera in a WalMart parking lot from a guy who was reselling my D40 on Craigslist that he obtained in a WalMart parking lot). Still, you might get your camera back! The issue I have is that sites like Flickr and 500px are not nearly as popular as Facebook has become for the average person sharing their photos. If they can find a way to search against Facebook photos, then I’d fully support this service. $10 is a pretty small amount to register your camera though, and it will give you an edge in case you do ever fall victim to camera theft.

The last thing I wanted to talk about is the Nintendo 3DS and its 3D camera. As far as I know, this is the first widely distributed 3D camera in the world. It’s unfortunate that Nintendo was cheap in the actual camera quality, because the potential is far greater than the reality. Regardless, a 3D still camera is an amazing tool. As photographers, we’ve been forever battling to interpret 3D reality in only two dimensions on film, paper, and/or digital screens. We struggle to find compositional tools to define depth, but with an actual 3D camera, you can see the depth. The cool thing is that it challenges you to exploit that depth, which actually carries over into a 2D conversion of the same photos. By trying to make a better 3D photo, you are actually making a better 2D one as well. I know that sounds crazy, but it makes sense when you really think about it. By trying to isolate and draw the eye to your subject, you instinctively use the techniques that photographers have been practicing for years. From using the rule of thirds to moving closer to finding leading lines, those techniques become second nature when composing in 3D because you are seeing the actual depth! I think the Nintendo 3DS could be a great training tool for teaching composition.

One Of A Kind

Taken on my iPhone in Best Buy seconds after I got the phone call from my wife that Steve Jobs passed away

Where to begin? What to say? I guess the only way to express how I feel about the man behind Apple is to share my own relationship with his contributions to modern life as I know it.

I didn’t grow up with computers. Sure, my brother had a Commodore VIC20 that we would hook up to a small black & white TV that we had in our bedroom, but other than that I grew up with minimal technology. I was an art and music nerd in my teenage years. I cared more for Gibson guitars and Marshall stacks than this AOL phenomenon my other less artsy friends were into. When I first attempted to go to college right out of high school, it was for graphic design. It was the first time I laid my hands on a Power Macintosh. I found it threatening. I spent all of my free time playing scales and writing lyrics, how would I ever have time to learn how to use a computer? Needless to say, I failed at that first attempt at higher education within the first semester when I dropped out to go on tour with my band.

Fast-forward 5 years and the band was winding down. I got married and my wife, unlike me, grew up with computers. The first major purchase we made together was an iMac in glorious translucent green. It only took a couple of days before I was a full fledged, card-carrying Apple fanboy. In fact, I was so engaged by the iMac that I wanted to learn as much as I could about computers in general. I went back to school to do just that. I built PC’s and talked endlessly about the latest technology with anyone who would listen. I was baptized in the “Steve Jobs reality distortion field”. Some people think that phrase is an insult, I think it is the ultimate term of endearment for the one man who could bend what we think of as possible into something we could feel in our soul.

I’ve made a living from technology and it has provided my family with almost everything we have today. I can’t think of another company that could have transformed this music lover into a technologist. Steve Jobs is a man who changed the world as we know it, and more importantly to me, his contributions to the world changed me.

Thanks, man.